Reviewing & undoing an import

The import log

The Imports page lists every import you’ve run, with its status and a count of changes.

karani.co/imports

Recent imports, with what each one changed.

Click an import to see its detail — what it touched, and how many records changed.

Reverting

Each import can be reverted for up to 10 minutes after it completes.

Reverting discards edits made in the window

If you edit any of the affected contacts during those ten minutes, those edits are lost when you revert.

So: look at the result first, revert if it’s wrong, and only start editing once you’re happy.

After ten minutes the revert option is gone.

What to check, in order

1. The count. Does the number of records changed match the number of rows in your file? A big discrepancy means rows were skipped — usually missing required fields.

2. A sample of records. Open three or four contacts and look at them properly. Did the fields land where you intended? Names split correctly?

3. The totals. For gifts, filter the Gifts Report to the imported date range and compare against your source. They should match exactly.

4. Duplicates. Run Potential Duplicate Contacts. This is where you find out whether your organisation IDs did their job.

If it went wrong and you can’t revert

Options, roughly in order of preference:

Re-import corrected data. If organisation IDs were mapped, re-running the import with a corrected file updates the same records rather than duplicating. This fixes most problems.

Fix in bulk from the contacts list. Status, tags, and group membership can be changed with With Selected… — see Contacts overview.

Merge duplicates. If the problem is duplicate contacts, work through Potential Duplicate Contacts.

Reset and start again. Settings → Data can reset contacts or gifts. Irreversible — take an export first, and only do this on an account that doesn’t yet have data you can’t recreate.

Ten rows first

Almost every “I can’t undo this import” situation is avoidable by importing ten rows, checking them, and then importing the rest. It costs two minutes.